KnitMe

Swallowtail and Treasure

Swallowtail is done.

I am not sure what it is about this shawl but I had to photograph it twice, it wanted to photograph blurred. Maybe it's the angora halo?

This came out to be 58 inches across the top and 29 inches deep - a bit on the small side. But it is WARM - just while I was photographing it I was noticing how much warmth it gave just lying across my arm. Use angora judiciously, folks, it's better than foam insulation!

I was very glad I did the nupps, they ended up not being too terribly aggravating with the crochet hook technique I mentioned last week. I also did about 4 extra rows in the edging, since it was clear I was going to have enough yarn, so the points are a bit longer than you'll see in other people's photos.

It is extremely pretty. I love to see those Evelyn Clark shawl patterns show up in Interweave. This one was a fairly quick knit for me - I started it on 8/5 and finished it on 8/24, so just about 3 weeks. (I did neglect everything else while I was working on it.) The yarn was about 1.75 ounces/430 yards of handspun from two batts of angora/silk/wool purchased at MS&W this spring. I'm not sure I'll make a habit of working with angora, but it was definitely an education and the product is lovely.

I have about 30 yards of the yarn left. I would like to do something with it but I'm not sure what. A teeny scarf on size 8 needles, perhaps??

I have eked out one sleeve for Tilia.

It's a little too long but I think I'm going to have to live with that, and make the other one match. I have completed the cuff on the second sleeve, and begun executing that soul-killing instruction "increase every 8th row 15 times."

On the first sleeve, I found myself 3/4ths of the way up and somehow off one stitch. I counted to see how many I had, and had an odd number. Given that you begin with 46, and increase at each end of every 8th row, it was not possible to have an odd number. I checked that I had really done both increases every 8 rows and I had. I figured how many increases I should have completed, and I seemed to have one stitch too many, so I left off the increase at one end of an increase row to get back in sync. That meant that the sleeve was growing so long that I just skipped the last increase altogether and accepted the two-stitch difference in width.

So, after completing two increases on the second sleeve I thought - gee, I better count.

49. I had 49 stitches. How was that possible? 46, plus two increases, should be 50. Did I do all the increases? Yes. OK so how did I go wrong so quickly?

It turned out I had omitted a YO in the next-to-last row of the leaf pattern. I went and got it back and so this sleeve is on the right track. But it made me wonder about the first one... A little squinting and I found this?

Even in this bad photo you should be able to see that there is a difference between the circled area on the LEFT and the circled area on the RIGHT.

I should add that this is the simplest part of the leaf lace pattern. So of course my mistake is there.

So my choice is to rip out the entire sleeve and redo it from the cuff, or make the second sleeve an inch too long to match the one where I miscompensated for my stitch count problem, and also leave out the last increase just to be symmetrical. Sigh. I tend to think I will not rip - who would ever notice this? And if I set the sleeve in with a backstitch, as I plan to, a little of that length will be taken up in the seam.

I knitted the neck facing before starting the second sleeve, just for a change of scenery. It is going to be a bit of a scoopy wide neck - I hope not too much to suit me. I think this is the only detail where I will find the cotton yarn not the best fit - it makes a much more heavy and bulky facing than Silky Wool or Hempathy would have. But the neckline will not lack for body at any rate!

The big skein of Bluefaced Leicester has a smaller sibling.

This one is a little smaller - 3.5 ounces and about 200 meters - I hope that the gauge is close enough to work out, it seems a tad poofier. It's such beautiful stuff, it will have to be made into something worthy of its unusualness. The colors were subtly different in this run of the roving - there is a bit of dark green that made its way into the middle of the aqua, and with the long runs I was spinning, it really came out as a detail. Also, this skein bled in the wash, which the other one did. How interesting - one section of the roving bled and the other did not. Mysterious.

I did find that this colorway was called 'Treasure.' A little googling, plus some memory of who else I knew had spun it, yielded the answer.

Meanwhile, something else is Kerry's fault.

This is a Kundert spindle, honeylocust and bloodwood on a maple shaft, 1.4 ounces. Kerry sent me a message about a spindle on eBay she thought I'd like. I pondered and puttered and eventually decided I was not sufficiently in love to shell out. But it got me thinking about what I WOULD shell out for, and the thing I wanted that I didn't have yet was a Kundert. So I went to The Wheel Thing because she always has such a great selection of spindles. I pondered and dithered and finally decided I had enough 1 ounce spindles and needed a heavier one.

I was amazed at how big it was.

I decided against some of the more standard Kundert-look spindles and went with this one because of its simplicity and the nice big areas of wood to look at. I have played with it just a little and it 's a rock-solid spinner, and the spiral looks so neat while it's spinning. Another winner. Now, no more spindles for me till maybe next spring. What's Maryland Sheep and Wool for, anyway??

Nupped

Not much in the way of new pictures this week because I pretty much just worked on Swallowtail, and my sock which doesn't look that different.

I decided I had enough yarn to do the nupps in the border, and since lily of the valley is my favorite flower I wanted to do it justice. So I did the nupps - 10 rows of nupps, about 20 in a row - that is a LOT of nupps.

But it wasn't that onerously hard, and I think it was worth it. These babies will look so great when it's blocked.

Speaking of babies, I have a hard time talking about knitting nupps without thinking of pacifiers... or nursing... or something like that. Heh.

The method that I ended up finding out worked for me involved a small crochet hook (I used an old Boye #3) and some loose knitting. The right-side setup for the nupp was k-yo-k-yo-k all in the same stitch, and then those 5 loops get purled together on the wrong side row. On the wrong side, when I came to the 5 loops, I moved all 5 onto my crochet hook, then I shoved them all up onto the thumbrest part of the hook and held them there while I picked up the working yarn to wrap around and pull through. This opened up the 5 loops so they were pretty uniform and easier to get through without snaggiing one of them.

All I have left on the shawl now is the edging, 16 rows worth. That will take me about a week I'm guessing, given the width of the thing now.

It isn't that long, but I think this fiber content (60% angora, and the rest is a blend of wool and silk) should stretch out nicely and not spring back too much.

I am almost to the armhole on the first Tilia sleeve, but that has been sort of abandoned as I worked my way through the nupps - it took me half an hour to do each 2-row repeat, and I didn't want to call it a day having done just one repeat, so there you have it.

Whodunit??

We'll get to today's surprising whodunit in a minute, but first a little old business.

The Eleanora socks are finally complete.

As much as they took forever to knit, they really are gorgeous socks, they look like brocade. The bright red yarn from Lisa really suits the design. I knitted the whole thing on size 0 needles because of the number of stitches in the circumference, and because of that I had to do a LOT of extra repeats to get the leg length, but they fit quite well.

The Swallowtail shawl is progressing, more slowly now that it takes 5 minutes to do a row...

I have only one repeat left of the 6-row center pattern and I will be starting the border. I started out with 1.9 ounces of this yarn and when I finish that center I think I will probably have used half of it. Can someone eyeball the photo in the most recent Interweave Knits, and set my mind at rest that half the yarn is enough to do the lily of the valley border??? Eek. There IS NO MORE of this yarn, so I can't afford to go wrong. I'm thinking that if I leave out the nepps from the lily pattern I'll save yarn - is that a delusion?? The center was 14 repeats of a 6 row pattern, plus 10 rows for setup. The border is a total of 22 rows. Then there's the edging. Waah.

Ahem. But, on to the whodunit part of this post. Who on earth made this yarn??

It's in my house, it's on my niddynoddy, but I cannot believe that I made it. I keep looking at it in amazement.

When I started spinning it last weekend, I quickly saw that it was producing long LONG color runs, and I decided I wanted to navajo ply to get those runs into the finished yarn. I had never done this before but I had been assured many times that to get your colors to stay together instead of making a marl, navajo ply is the way to go.

I made sure that I spun the single to get the longest possible color runs. To do this, I only split the roving once in half lengthwise - I didn't strip it into skinny strips. Then I predrafted it horizontally to open it out, and I spun each color before letting the next one into the twist. This was really easy and did not take a lot of concentration to do. Bluefaced Leicester is so easy to spin anyway, it was such bliss to spin it after the angora that took so much effort. Here's the finished bobbin of singles. See those nice wide bands of solid colors?

There were basically three colors in this roving: a lovely sea green aqua, turquoise, and violet blue. The photos tend to wash out the contrasts a little in the finished yarn, but there really are 3 distinct colors and one of them is GREEN...

So I took a deep breath and started navjo plying. As it turned out, the runs were so long that I didn't even have to adjust my plying technique at all, I just pulled up my loop and it was always just right. There were areas of the single where there was a transition from one color to the next, and in general that meant that there was one yard of finished yarn where you had a transition happening in one of the plys, but mostly I got exactly the color runs I wanted.

So I have this hank, 4 ounces and around 250 yards, and I keep looking at it. Where did this come from? Who made this? It's probably the best yarn I ever did. I can't believe I did it. So I kept taking pictures of it.

Anybody have any of that old Dyeing For Fiber BFL lying around that they want to sell off??? I'll take it... Failing that, does anybody remember the name of this colorway?

My mother was a knitter before me

In her late 70's my Mom was about done with knitting the usual fare. Tired of knitting afghans, sweaters and socks for the family, she turned to something more frivolous and began to knit Jean Greenhowe's dolls. My I present the doll family - Ma and Pa, the Boy, the Twins and the Toddler.

The details are astounding. The girls have frilly drawers beneath their skirts and little knitted flowers on their hats. The noses are knit separately and sewn on and details like belt buckles are embroidered on. I can't imagine how much work it was to get the hair on their heads, and how many ends there must have been to darn in. The work is amazing and these dolls are a real treasure to me.

Lump of lace:

The bride's shawl is still a work in progress, as you can see. The centre panel of dayflower lace is finished and I have begun the never-ending border. I hope to have it finished and blocked within the next couple of weeks.

I have been almost monogamous to the shawl, but I have managed a bit of spindling. This is the 12 g. Bosworth Featherweight that I got at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this year. It's canary wood, and it is an absolutely delightful little spindle. Here it is with a silk/wool blend from The Good Shepherd (no web site - email hoparwel@sover.net), also acquired at MDSW. I didn't get a whole lot at MDSW this year, but it was nearly all in these colours.

And finally, this is the Waterlily Sock by Sivia Harding. I test knit this design a while back but couldn't show it off until the pattern was published. I just love the subtle use of beads and the lacey lily pad and waterlily motifs. This design looks even better done in Lisa Souza's Hand Dyed Heathered Solids, but sadly, I didn't have any on hand when these needed to be done. That's what I plan to use the next time I knit these socks.

FO, but no...

Well I did finish the Eleanora socks. But I forgot to take a picture of them. Senility: you get it from your children. Next week.

After completing such a long sock project requiring so much concentration and squinting I decided I wanted a simple sock project - size 1 needles, nothing fancy in any way. So I dragged out the 'Railroad Rib' sock from Fibertrends, and my Knitpicks sock yarn that already doesn't exist anymore.

The color is called 'Hydrangea'. The pattern is very simple, but not so simple that I would tear my hair out from knitting around and around and aroundandaround. I think the contrasts and striping in the yarn would have overpowered just about any more complex pattern, so this is a good match. The yarn itself is not exactly what I expected. It's very firm (no air buried in it), and although it's merino it has a slightly cottony feel. I think these socks will be durable and warm although they are not superwash. It's a workaday yarn, but at $6 for a pair of socks it seems quite acceptable. I guess the line of yarn itself didn't sell well, as they've gotten rid of three quarters of their colors, including this one. Oh well. I thought I had bought two different colors of this yarn, but I cannot locate the other one, so maybe I didn't...

I also cast on for the Swallowtail Shawl from the new issue of Interweave Knits, in my handspun angora. I really like how this looks in the pattern.

I realized that this is probably not a wise project for someone like me who always worries about running out of yarn. Unlike Flower Basket, this shawl is sort of a 'fixed size' project - you have to do the first pattern 14 times so you'll have the right number of stitches for the second, and you have to do the second twice (?I think) to have the right number of stitches for the edging. I went up one needle size because my yarn is a tad thicker than the laceweight alpaca the pattern uses, and I have about 30 yards more of yarn than they use - will I make it? or will I run out of yarn with 1/4 of the edging to go? Yikes.

The weather improved this weekend, so yesterday I was able to get into the sunporch and sit with the big wheel again. I dug out from the bottom of my fiber stash this Bluefaced Leicester that I bought from the old Dyeing For Fiber lady who has since sold off her business. I can't remember the name of the colorway but it was so cool looking that I had to start on it. There is a stretch of wonderful seawater green that is like being at the beach.

After doing the angora, this almost spins itself. I love Bluefaced Leicester. I hope to navajo ply this so that I can preserve the long long color runs I'm getting, instead of ending up with a homogenous marl.

Now, I know that everyone around here seems to be under the misimpression that I'm pretty smart. Well just to straighten you out, here's a look at the shoulder of Tilia that I bound off on Saturday.

Heh. Shortly thereafter we had this:

Then finally we had this.

We have embarked on the sleeves.